Welcome to Eating Niagara

Hi, and welcome to Eating Niagara.

Readers of The Standard may remember my foray into living the 100-Mile Diet two summers ago.

Despite some of the glitches I encountered — it's tough as a vegetarian living in Ontario instead of legume-rich Saskatchewan and after a year-and-a-half, I ate my first eggplant parmesan last week after OD'ing on it as a strict locavore in 2007 — local food remains a passion of mine. Hence the blog.

But this site won't just me musing about the trials and tribulations of being a locavore. Sure, there will be some of that. But this is also a partnership with Wellanport organic, heirloom vegetable grower, Linda Crago. She plies me most of the year with my veggies through her CSA (community-supported agriculture, for newbies to the locavore lingo. It's sort of like buying shares in a farm, or guaranteeing you'll be a farmer's customer for a season, ensuring a regular supply of veggies).

Not only will the blog feature my perspective as a consumer of local food, but Linda will also write about it from the farmer's perspective. We'll offer tips on being the most local locavore possible, including gardening tips from Linda. We'll try to keep you up to date with everything happening on the local food scene, be it information on some of the best places to find local food in the region, links to other local food websites and news stories about local food and agriculture. The hope is to make people hungrier for local food but also be a reminder that local food is as much about the farmers as the locavores.

In addition to our ramblings, we encourage readers to post tips, stories and comments of their own. I certainly don't claim to be an expert on the local food scene and what better way to make this a local blog than to include multiple local voices.

So read — and eat — on. And bear with us. This blog is new and will change regularly in the beginning as I become more familiar with the technical side of blogging. It's all in an effort to create an identity and be as user friendly as possible.